Ankles, Wine and More

Howdy from SA. We had a great day today. At least that’s my take. Great weather and great food! What else do you want? Oh yeah, and healthy kids. We do want that and we’ve got that too, so far.

OK, we’ve had minor bumps and bruises: Bailey’s ankles seemed to swell up post plane ride, which may be normal after sitting on the same plane for 14 hours. Then Emma’s rebellious razor attacked her finger in the hotel room (a Band-Aid and some pink duct tape was successful for that treatment). Vicky fried a hair straightener in the hotel room wall socket, which is good actually, because that WAS going to happen so we’re glad we got it over with. (Apparently, no hair staighteners were functional last night but there was still a lot of straight hair today (including Evan’s) so I’m not sure I understand the technology. It is true that Richard’s hair was not straight but I attribute that to ‘bedhead syndrome' that a simple comb could correct.) Also on the electrical front, Tawnya’s WalMart converter was semi-cooked which is quite surprising considering the high quality of products WalMart puts out.

Continuing on the Tawnya front, she almost foundered today because she was doing some barrel riding. She was the horse. Yes, it’s odd, but you just can’t leave these kids with any free time, even standing around the bus waiting to board.

We tasted wine today before noon and it was cool even though not all of us were big wine fans. Amy did set a record on eating the most taste-pallet clearing crackers at a whopping 7. The girl can pound crackers. And finally, Shelby defied death by confronting a mother ewe by taking a closeup picture of the mom and lamb. Good picture and it was close up: pretty much the whole picture was the pupil of the lamb. That's photo journalism at its best.

Awesome breakfast this morning at the hotel, and even better dinner in a rotating restaurant up above Cape Town. Many of us had Spring Bok for the entrée, which was quite good. (This is an antelope, and should not to be confused with the South African Rugby Spring Boks because those guys would not be tender on the grill, I’m guessing. BTW, Invictus is an excellent movie; I saw it on the plane ride over. Should’ve made that mandatory watching for the students on this trip, but that would’ve taken foresight and that’s not my forte).

In the morning we're off to a farm to camp overnight. Gonna be fun, but don't look for a blog update because I'm purt near sure I won't be near the internet.

Hasta luego for now,

DrG